The curriculum is tailored to the kids’ needs. English teacher Katelyn Virmalo uses novels like Sherman Alexie’s Flight, whose protagonist, according to one reviewer, is “the essence of troubled adolescence.”

Phil Smith says individual attention is one of the school’s strong points. In a two-student writing class — one of the school’s Southern Maine Community College offerings — E.J. Rosario, 19, of North Waterboro, is learning, he says, “to put thoughts down in an organized way.” Rosario, who says he got into trouble because of drug addiction and stealing, aims to attend SMCC when he finishes his one-year Long Creek stint.

Extracurricular activities include the Maine Inside Out theater program, which brings in “facilitating artists” to organize student-acted and -written plays put on for families and friends. (See “Theater Workshop Brings Long Creek Kids Out of Their Shells,” by Deirdre Fulton, April 1.) The school newspaper has the usual sports news, horoscopes, and drawings and poems, but also, in one issue, a page of regrets: “I wouldn’t have tried to go into that house,” writes one student.

In the big gym or on the playing fields outside, residents have at least an hour of exercise a day. The basketball team goes to state class “D” tournaments. There’s cross-country running and boys’ soccer and, this spring, outdoor track.

Another part of the “habilitation” of these adolescents is strengthening ties to family and community.

Just by being in Long Creek, “Your prognosis is worse,” says O’Neill. You’re in a high-risk category, and statistics demonstrate detention centers can be a school for crime if the adolescent stays too long. Bouffard says, “After nine months you’ve got to be careful about diminishing returns.”

So the goal is to treat the kid and get him back to family and community as swiftly as possible. Family members are encouraged to visit as many as three times a week. This is made easier because nearly all Long Creek residents are from Cumberland and York counties.

The reintegration of kids into family and community is helped by what is known as indeterminate sentencing. In a phased process, kids are released when the staff determines they’re ready to go. This “makes our program work,” says O’Neill. The process begins when a resident goes outside with a supervisor, then on limited and eventually long passes, and then to work and school on the outside. In contrast, the adult system ended indeterminate sentencing in the 1970s when parole was repealed, and the Warren prison is far from Maine’s population centers.

“Every one of these kids gets released to the community,” O’Neill points out, stressing how important it is to transform them before their release. This attitude, too, contrasts with Maine's adult system. While approximately 95 percent of inmates are released, little effort is made to transform them or reintegrate them into the outside world.

With so many disturbed kids, Long Creek still has its struggles. On average there are about six attempts at suicide each year. There’s a five-cell solitary-confinement section, the Special Management Unit, which in contrast to the rest of the center looks like a prison pod.

But it's little used now. On a recent day, only one slim young man is in it. Allowed out of the cell to speak with this reporter, he says he is there while he gets his medications straightened out — meaning until they can stabilize his behavior.

Solitary confinement: bad for chimps, okay for humans? Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins is a key cosponsor of legislation that, among other provisions, would outlaw psychologically damaging solitary confinement for more than 500 chimpanzees caged for research in federally supported laboratories.

Build on each other Why is that when one Maine news outlet breaks a big story, the others spend more energy trying to copy it, rather than extend it? Take the most recent example, the labor mural dispute.

Top prison officials fired In a continuing shakeup at the troubled Maine State Prison, new Corrections commissioner Joseph Ponte has fired six top officials including its controversial security chief, Deputy Warden James O'Farrell.

Interview: Ray Harrington returns to Maine This weekend, the transplanted Maine stand-up comedian Ray Harrington appears for a weekend of shows at the Comedy Connection, performing a set that will be recorded for a forthcoming record on, as he puts it, a "legitimate label."

Tapley racks up another award Portland Phoenix contributing writer Lance Tapley, who has covered conditions in the Maine State Prison and throughout the state's corrections system since 2005, will be honored by the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine for "outstanding advocacy for prison reform."

Review: The Whole World Waiting They thought America was a glittering land of wealth and fame . . . they were wrong. Fifteen immigrant and refugee teenagers tell their stories of coming to New England and share their perspectives in The Whole World Waiting , a compilation of documentary vignettes lushly shot by David Meiklejohn at locations in and around Portland, Maine.

SUBVERSIVE SUMMER | June 18, 2014 Prisons, pot festivals, and Orgonon: Here are some different views of summertime Maine — seen through my personal political lens.

LEFT-RIGHT CONVERGENCE - REALLY? | June 06, 2014 “Unstoppable: A Gathering on Left-Right Convergence,” sponsored by consumer advocate Ralph Nader, featured 26 prominent liberal and conservative leaders discussing issues on which they shared positions. One was the minimum wage.

STATE OF POLARIZATION | April 30, 2014 As the campaign season begins, leading the charge on one side is a rural- and northern-Maine-based Trickle-Down Tea Party governor who sees government’s chief role as helping the rich (which he says indirectly helps working people), while he vetoes every bill in sight directly helping the poor and the struggling middle class, including Medicaid expansion, the issue that most occupied the Legislature this year and last.

MICHAEL JAMES SENT BACK TO PRISON | April 16, 2014 The hearing’s topic was whether James’s “antisocial personality disorder” was enough of a mental disease to keep him from being sent to prison.